VLC media player pulled from the App Store

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If you haven’t downloaded VLC Media Player for your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad yet, then it’s too late, as Apple has pulled it from the App Store. The app wasn’t breaking any rules with its functionality, however. The thing that ultimately made Apple take action was the GNU license it was released under.

Remi Denis-Courmount is one of the main developers working on VLC. In October last year he sent a copyright infringement notice to Apple stating that the company was violating the GNU General Public License for VLC. It seems strange that a developer working on VLC would do this, but VLC is free software and the license it is distributed under has to be adhered to.

As Apple does not allow free and open distribution, which VLC requires in any form it takes, the GNU license was being violated. Two months later and Apple has finally reacted to the infringement notice by removing the app. The alternative was clearly unacceptable for the company and its closed App Store environment.

At last, Apple has removed VLC media player from its application store. Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved – the hard way. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone, given the precedents.

With VLC set to continue being distributed under the GNU General Public License, and Apple continuing to operate the App Store as a closed environment with app DRM, it looks unlikely that VLC will ever return to Apple devices.

Speak Your Mind

Nitpicker

Something interesting you don’t mention is that his day job is for Nokia. It may be related, it may not. It should still be disclosed.

The App Store model does not violate version 2 of the GNU GPL. Apple makes it inconvenient to run unsigned code you compiled yourself, but not impossible, and not even that difficult. They aren’t *really* fighting against jailbreaking. They could eliminate it entirely if they really set their minds to it.

http://www.howictheworld.com Hotrao

Could be for this or to avoid that the service for renting and selling films is put under discussion by the ability to read divx films inside Apple devices?

I really love iPhone, iPad and Mac, though I use mainly Linux and windows for work. But is not with this kind of things (or by trying to exclude porn) that Apple can reinforce the position against competitors.

Nitpicker

Apple doesn’t care where you get media you watch on your devices. They make money on the device itself. The services are only to provide a reason to get the device. In 2010, they made a total of $5 billion from the iTunes store. That includes all music sold, all iPod accessories they sold, all App Store sales, *everything*. The same year, they made $25 billion from iPhones and iPhone accessories.

Their video sale and rental business is vanishingly small compared to their device business. They don’t care about companies competing in the media supply arena so long as Apple devices are being used to view the media. The iTunes exists to give at least one source of media. Nothing more.

That is CRAPPY! I love the VLC Media Player app. And now I can’t tell customers to use that app if they don’t want to convert there videos or whatnot. I use the Safari Download Manager with my jailbroken iphone 4. And once you download a video from the internet, you can play it with VLC Media PLayer. It is a cool trick.
Apple has to allow them to put the app back on the store.